Sympathoadrenal progenitors in embryonic chick sympathetic ganglia show distinct responses to glucocorticoid hormones.

The sympathoadrenal cell lineage originates from the neural crest and comprises the neurons of sympathetic ganglia, adrenal and extra-adrenal chromaffin cells, and the so-called small intensely fluorescent cells. In vitro studies using mammalian immature chromaffin cells, adrenal or sympathetic ganglionic progenitors, or ganglionic small intensely fluorescent cells, have suggested that glucocorticoid hormones are essential for inhibiting neuronal differentiation of sympathoadrenal progenitors and promoting the chromaffin cell phenotype. In avian systems, however, the distinct cellular phenotypes in this lineage and the molecular cues underlying their differentiation have not been fully explored. In the chick embryo, early sympathetic ganglion anlagen are populated by granule-containing cells that morphologically resemble small intensely fluorescent cells and chromaffin cell progenitors. These cells subsequently disappear from the ganglia, by death and by transition into fully differentiated sympathetic neurons, as indicated by the appearance of cells that are ultrastructurally intermediate between granule-containing cells and fully differentiated neurons (granule-containing cells in transition). In the present study, we show that treatment of cultured sympathetic cells dissociated from embryonic day (E) 7, 9, or 11 lumbar sympathetic ganglia with the glucocorticoid hormones hydrocortisone or corticosterone has neither an inhibitory nor an inductive effect on phenotypes of granule-containing cells or granule-containing cells in transition. In cell cultures of E15 ganglia, however, glucocorticoid treatment induces a granule-containing cell resembling the granule-containing phenotype. These results suggest that the early granule-containing cells and granule-containing cells in transition in chick sympathetic ganglia are not the counterparts of glucocorticoid-responsive mammalian small intensely fluorescent or chromaffin progenitor cells, despite their morphological similarity. However, E15 sympathetic ganglia apparently contain a glucocorticoid-responsive progenitor population that can differentiate into chromaffin-like cells. These progenitors seem to require a systemic or intraganglionic developmental signal or undergo a temporal switch that renders them susceptible to glucocorticoids.